"They are coming out of the ravine. You will hear the whoop directly."
The owner of the hut, stirred by the Susquehannock's foot, started up.
Such an alarm being about the least surprising thing that could happen,
he kept his wits, and after the first intake of the breath and
exclamation of, "Indians!" he went about his preparations coolly enough.
Rushing into the cabin where Landless had already waked the women, he
groped for his tinder box, and with a steady hand struck a light and
fired a pine knot which he stuck into a block of wood pierced to receive
it; then jerked from the wall his musket and powder horn.
"You both have guns," he said coolly. "Good! We 'll die fighting." The
woman had flown to the door, had seen that the heavy wooden bars were
drawn across it, and now stood beside him with a resolute face, and an
axe in her hands.
A moment of silence, and then the quiet night was cleft by the war
whoop--dreadful sound, forerunner of death and torture, concentrating in
its savage cadence all ideas of terror! A moment more, and there came
the sound of many moccasined feet and the hurling of many bodies against
the door. The door held, and the man put the muzzle of his gun in one
of the cracks between the logs and fired. The explosion was followed by
a yell. Shot and cry preluded pandemonium. Without were demoniacal
cries, quick crashing blows against the door, stealthy feet, clambering
forms; within were smoke and the noise of the muskets, the crying of the
child, and a red and flickering light which now brought out each detail
of the rude interior, now plunged all into shadow.
"We are making it hot for them," cried the owner of the hut, reloading
his musket. "There 's some shall go to hell before we do. Joan, my
girl--"
An arrow, whistling through a crack, pierced his brain and he fell to
the ground with a crash. The shriek that the woman set up was answered
from without by a triumphant yell, and then one voice was heard
speaking.
"It is the mulatto!" cried Patricia, clasping her hands.
"Yes," answered Landless grimly. "I thought I had done for that devil,
but it seems not. May I have better luck this time!"
"Ugh!" said the Indian, and pointed to the roof, which was low and
thatched with dried grass and moss.
"I see," said Landless. "The cabin is on fire. We must leave it in five
minutes, come what may."
"We will never leave it alive," the Indian said calmly. "The dogs have
us fast. The Chief of the Conestogas will die in a strange land; his
bones will be a plaything for the wolves of the mountains; his scalp
will hang before the wigwam of an Algonquin dog. He will never see the
village and the pleasant river, never will he smoke the peace pipe, he
and his braves, with the Wyandots and the Lenni Lenape, sitting beneath
the mulberries in front of the lodge. He will never see the cornfeast.
He will never dance the war dance again, nor will he lead the war party.
The sagamore dies, and who will tell his tribe? He falls like a leaf in
the forest, like a pebble that is cast into the water. The leaf is not
seen: the stream closes above the pebble--it is gone!" His voice rose
into a chant, stern and mournful, and his vast form appeared to expand,
to become taller. He threw down his gun and drew his long, bright
knife.
"They are upon us!" cried Landless, and thrust Patricia behind him.
The rude door, constructed of the trunks of saplings, bound together
with withes, crashed inwards, coming to the floor with a tremendous
noise, and a dozen savages precipitated themselves into the cabin.
Landless fired, bringing one to his knee; then clubbed his musket and
swung it over his shoulder. Between him and the Susquehannock, standing
beside him with bent body and knife drawn back against his breast, and
the invaders, was a space some few feet in width, and in this space
something dreadful now happened.
On one side lay the body of the man with the woman crouched above it, on
the other a pile of skins upon which lay the little child. It had
sobbed itself into exhaustion and quiet, but terrified afresh by the
savage forms pouring through the doorway, the increased and awful
clamor, the flames which had now seized upon the walls, and the choking
smoke which filled the hut, it now scrambled from the pallet, and with a
weak cry started across the space towards its mother. It crossed the
path of the Ricahecrian chief--he glanced downwards, saw the tiny
tottering figure with its outstretched arms, caught it up, and holding
it by its feet, dashed its head against the ground. The cry which the
child uttered as he raised it reached the until then deaf ears of the
mother. She started up with a shriek that rang high above the yelling
of the savages, and darted forward, only to receive at her very feet the
mangled form of the baby she had sung to sleep but a few hours before.
She caught it to her breast and with another dreadful cry rushed upon
the savage. He met her, seized her free arm, raised it, and plunged his
knife into her bosom. Still clasping the child to her bosom, she fell
without a groan, while the Indian bounded on towards the three who yet
remained alive.
The Susquehannock met him. "A chief for a chief," he said with a cold
smile, and the two locked together in a deadly embrace. When the
Ricahecrian was dead, the Susquehannock turned to find Landless--one
Indian dead before him, another writhing away like a wounded
snake--confronting across the body at his feet the graceful figure and
the amber-hued, evil, smiling face of Luiz Sebastian. So strong were
the flames by now, and so dense and stifling the smoke, that of the
score or more who had broken into the cabin but few remained within its
walls, which were fast becoming those of a furnace, the majority
retreating to the fresh air outside, whence they whooped on to their
devil's work the bolder spirits within.
These now bore down _en masse_ upon the devoted three. One threw his
tomahawk; it whistled within half an inch of Landless's head, and stuck
into the wall behind him. Another struck at him with his knife, but he
beat him down with his musket, and turned again to the mulatto, who,
knife in hand, watched his chance to run in upon him.
"Look to the yellow slave, my brother," cried the Susquehannock, "I will
care for these dogs," and hurled his gigantic form upon them. One went
down before his knife; he broke the back of another, bending him like a
reed across his knee; a third fell, cleft to the brain by his
tomahawk--there was a fresh influx from without, and he was borne down
and knives thrust into him. Struggling to his feet, with one last
superhuman exertion of his vast strength, he shook them off as a stag
shakes off the dogs, and stretching out his arm, cried to Landless,
dimly seen through the ever thickening smoke;--
"My brother, farewell! I said we should find Death in the Blue
Mountains.... The Iroquois laughs at the Algonquin dogs, laughs at
Death--dies laughing."
He broke into wild, unearthly, choking laughter, his figure swaying to
and fro like a pine in a storm. The laughter, an indescribable and most
dreadful sound, became low, choked, a mere rattle in the throat, died
into silence, and the laugher crashed to the ground like a pine for
which the storm has been too much.
Landless drew a breath that was like a moan, but kept his eyes upon the
yellow menace before him.
"The Ricahecrians are my good friends," said Luiz Sebastian. "They
promise me a wigwam in their village in the Blue Mountains. I shall
lead to it a bride, and she shall be no Indian girl."
Landless struck at him over the dead body between them, but the mulatto,
springing back, avoided the blow.
"It is my hour," he said, still with a smile.
A portion of the roof fell in, making a barrier of flame between them.
A volume of smoke arose, and through it Landless and Patricia dimly saw
Indians and mulatto making for the doorway, driven forth by the
intolerable heat and the imminent danger of the burning walls and the
remainder of the roof caving in upon them. Beyond Landless was the
square opening leading into the tiny shed in which he had been sleeping
when this midnight visitation came upon them. Raising Patricia in his
arms, he made for it, and they presently found themselves in temporary
security. It was but for a moment, he knew, for the flames were already
taking hold upon the shed, but as he set his burden down he whispered
encouraging words.
"I know," she answered. "We are in God's hands. I would rather die than
to come into that man's power. But the door to the shed is open and the
way seems clear. Could we not escape even now?"
"Alas! madam, the flames make it as light as day around the cabin. They
would certainly see us. And yet if we stay, we burn. When the fire
reaches this straw above our heads we will try it.
"I would rather stay here," said Patricia.
Behind them the flames roared and crackled, the cabin burning like a
torch, and with the flames rose and fell the triumphant cries of the
savages, who, unaware of the existence of the tiny shed, so covered with
the vines that draped the cabin that it seemed one with it, congregated
in front of the gap in the wall where had been the door, and waited for
their still living victims to emerge from it.
"Look!" breathed Patricia, grasping Landless's arm.
They stood facing the open door of the shed, and gazing through it down
the lit slope of the knoll. Into the light, out of the darkness at the
foot of the hill, now glided a man, naked save for the loin cloth, and
painted with horrible devices; in the figure, noiseless and bent
forward, savage cunning; in the eyes, the lust for blood. In his
footsteps came his double, then a third, in all points exactly similar,
then a fourth, a fifth--a long line, creeping as silently as shadows--a
nightmare procession--up through the lurid light.
Landless drew Patricia further into the shadow.
"Wait," he said. "They may prove our deliverance."
The stealthy line reached the summit of the knoll, then broadened into a
disc, and swept past the frail shelter in which stood the fugitives. A
moment, and the war whoop rang out, to be answered by a burst of yells
from the Ricahecrians, and then by prolonged and awful clamor.
"Now is our time," said Landless.
Hand in hand they ran from the shed that was now in a light flame, and
down the slope up which had come the band of unconscious Samaritans.
"The stream!" said Landless. "There is a small raft upon it if they
have not destroyed it."
They made for the water, found the raft hidden in a clump of reeds and
uninjured, and stepped upon it. In ten minutes' time from the appearance
of the new factor in the sum they were moving steadily, if slowly, down
a stream so wide that in Europe it would have been called a river. The
glare from the burning cabin faded, the flaming mass itself shrunk until
it looked a burning bush, then dwindled to a star. The noise of the
struggle upon the mount was with them longer, but at length it, too,
died away.
"Which will conquer?" said Patricia at last, from where she crouched at
the feet of Landless, who stood erect, poling.
"The Ricahecrians were the stronger," he answered. "But they may be so
handled that they will not come at us again. That must be our hope."
There followed a long silence, broken by Patricia.
"The baby," she said in a quivering voice, "the poor, pretty, innocent
little thing!"
"It is well with it," said Landless. "It is spared all toil and
suffering. It is better as it is."
"The man and woman went together," said Patricia, still with the sob in
her voice. "They would have chosen it so, I think. But the poor
Indian--"
"He was my friend," said Landless slowly, "and I brought him death."
"It is I that brought him death!" cried Patricia, tossing up her arms.
"I that shall bring you death!"
Her voice rose into a cry that echoed drearily from the hills about
them, and she beat her hands against the raft with a sudden passion.
"You would bring me no unwelcome gift," said Landless steadily,
"provided only that the time when I could serve you with my life were
past."
She did not answer, and they floated on in silence down the little
river, between banks lined with dwarf willows and sighing reeds. With
the dawn they came to rapids through which they could not pilot their
frail craft. Leaving the water, they turned their faces towards the
rising sun, and pursued their journey through the forest that seemed to
stretch to the end of the world.
*CHAPTER XXXIII*
*THE FALL OF THE LEAF*
Days passed, and the forest put on a beauty, austere, yet fantastic,
bizarre. Above it hung a pale blue sky; within it, a perpetual, pale
blue haze, through which blazed the scarlet and gold of the trees--great
bonfires which did not warm, flaming pyres which were never consumed.
Morning and evening a shroud of chill, white mist fell upon them, or
they would have mocked the sunrise and the sunset. Along the summit of
low hills ran a comb of fire--the scarlet of the sumach, leaf and berry;
underfoot were crimson vines like trails and splashes of blood; into the
streams from which the wanderers stooped to drink, fell the gold of the
sycamore. From the hills they looked down upon a red and yellow world,
a gorgeous bourgeoning and blossoming that put the spring to shame, a
sea of splendor with here and there a dark-green isle of cedar or of
pine. Day after day saw the same calm blue sky, the same blue haze, the
same slow drifting of crimson and gold to earth. The winds did not
blow, and the murmur of the forest was hushed. All sound seemed muffled
and remote. The deer passed noiseless down the long aisles, the beaver
and the otter slipped noiseless into the stream, the bear rolled its
shambling bulk away from human neighborhood like a shapeless shadow. At
times vast flocks of wild pigeons darkened the air, but they passed like
a cloud. The singing birds were gone. Only at night did sound awake,
for then the wolves howled, and the infrequent scream of the panther
chilled the blood, and the fires which the wanderers must needs build
roared and crackled through the darkness. In the daytime beauty, vast
and melancholy; in the night, shadows and mysteries, the voice of wild
beasts and the stillness of the stars; at all times an enemy, they knew
not how far away or how near at hand, behind them.
Through this world which seemed more a phantasm than a reality, Landless
and Patricia fared, and were happy. All passion, all fear, all mistrust
and anger slept in that enchanted calm. They never spoke of the past,
they had well-nigh ceased to think of it. When they knelt upon the turf
beside some crystal brook, and drank of the water which seemed red wine
or molten gold according to the nature of the trees above it, it might
have been the water of Lethe.
In the illimitable forest, too, in the monotony of sunshine and shade,
of glade and dell, of crystal streams and tiny valleys, each the
counterpart of the other, in dense woods and grassy savannahs; in the
yesterday so like to-day, and the to-day so like to-morrow, there was no
hint of the future. It was enchanted ground, where to-morrow must
always be like to-day. They kept their faces to the east, and they
walked each day as many leagues as her strength would permit, and
Landless, imitating as best he could the dead Susquehannock, took all
precautions to cover their trail; but that done all was done, and they
put care behind them. Landless, walking in a dream, knew that it was a
dream, and said to himself, "I must awaken, but not yet. I will dream
and be happy yet a little while." But Patricia dreamt and knew it not.
She kept her wonted state, or, rather, with a quiet insistence he kept
it for her. He never addressed her save as "Madam," and he cared for
her comfort, and in all things bore himself towards her with the formal
courtesy he would have shown a queen. He said to himself, "Godfrey
Landless, Godfrey Landless, thou mayst forget much, perhaps, for a
little while; but not this! If thou dost, thou art no honorable man."
Master of himself, he walked beside her, cared for her, tended her,
guarded her, served her as if he had been a knight-errant out of a
romance, and she a distressed princess. And she rewarded him with a
delicate kindliness, and a perfectly trustful, childlike dependence upon
his strength, wisdom, and resource. All her bearing towards him was
marked by an inexpressible charm, half-playful, wholly gracious and
womanly. The lady of the manor was gone, and in her place moved the
Patricia Verney of the enchanted forest--a very different creature.
Thus they fared through the dying summer, and were happy in the present
of soft sunshine, tender haze, fantastic beauty. Sometimes they walked
in silence, too truly companions to feel the need of words; at other
times they talked, and the hours flew past, for they both had wit,
intelligence, quick fancy, high imagination. Sometimes their laughter
rang through the glades of the forest, and set the squirrels in the oaks
to chattering; sometimes in the melancholy grace of the evening when the
purple twilight sank through the trees, and the large stars came out one
by one, they spoke of grave things, of the mysteries of life and death,
of the soul and its hereafter. She had early noticed that he never lay
down at night without having first silently prayed. There had been a
time when she would have laughed at this as Puritan hypocrisy, but now,
one dark night, when the noises of the forest were loud about them, and
the wind rushed through the trees, she came close to him and knelt
beside him. Thenceforward each night, before they lay down beside their
fire, and when from out the darkness came all weird and mournful sounds,
when the owl hooted, and the catamount screamed, and the long howl of
the wolf was answered by its fellow, he stood with bared head, and in a
few short, simple words commended them both to God. "I will both lay me
down in peace and sleep, for Thou, Lord, only makest me to dwell in
safety."
There came a day when they sat down to rest upon the dark, smooth ground
in a belt of pines, and looked between rows of stately columns to where,
in the distance, the arcade was closed by a broken and confused glory of
crimson oak and yellow maple. Landless told her that it was like gazing
at a rose window down the long nave of a cathedral.
"I have never seen a cathedral," she said; "I have dreamed of them,
though, of your Milton's 'dim religious light,' and of the rolling
music."
"I have seen many," he answered. "But none of them are to me what the
abbey at Westminster is. If you should ever see it--"
Something in her face stopped him: there was a silence, and then he said
quietly:--
"When you shall see it, is perhaps better, madam?"
"Yes," she answered, gazing before her with wide fixed eyes.
He did not finish his sentence, and neither spoke again until they had
left the pines and were forcing their way through the tall grass and
reeds of a wide savannah. They came to a small, clear stream, dotted
with wild fowl and mirroring the pale blue sky, and he lifted her in his
arms as was his wont and bore her through the shallow water. As he set
her gently down upon the other side, she said in a low voice, "I thought
you knew. Had it not been for that night, that night which sets us
here, you and I,--I should be now in London, at Whitehall, at some
masque or pageant perhaps. I should be all clad in brocade and jewels,
not like this--" She touched her ragged gown as she spoke, then burst
into strange laughter. "But God disposes! And you--"
"I should be in a place which is never mentioned at Court, madam," said
Landless grimly. "The grave, to wit. Unless indeed his Excellency
proposed hanging me in chains."
She cried out as though she had been struck. "Don't!" she said
passionately. "Don't speak to me so! I will not bear it!" and ran past
him into the woods beyond the savannah.
When he came up with her he found her lying on a mossy bank with her
face hidden.
"Madam," he said, kneeling beside her, "forgive me."
She lifted a colorless face from her hands. "How far are we from the
Settlements?" she demanded.
"I do not know, madam. Some twenty leagues, probably, from the frontier
posts."
"How far from the friendly tribes?"
"Something less than that distance."
"Then when we reach them, sir," she said imperiously, "you are to leave
me with them at one of the villages above the falls."
"To leave you there!"
"Yes. You will tell them that I am the daughter of one of the paleface
chiefs, of one whom the great white chief calls 'brother,' and then they
will not dare to harm me or to detain me. They will send me down the
river to the nearest post, and the men there will bring me on to
Jamestown, and so home."
"And why may not I bring you on to Jamestown--and so home?" demanded
Landless with a smile.
"Because--because--you know that you are lost if you return to the
Settlements."
"And nevertheless I shall return," he said with another smile.
She struck her hands together. "You will be mad--mad! If you had not
been their leader!--but as it is, there is no hope. Leave me with the
friendly Indians, then go yourself to the northward. Make for New
Amsterdam. God will carry you through the Indians as he has done so
far. I will pray to him that he do so. Ah, promise me that you will
go!"
Landless took her hand and kissed it. "Were you in absolute safety,
madam," he said gently, "and if it were not for one other thing, I would
go, because you wish it, and because I would save you any pang, however
slight, that you might feel for the fate of one who was, who is, your
servant--your slave. I would go from you, and because it else might
grieve you, I would strive to keep my life through the forest, through
the winter--"
"Ah, the winter!" she cried. "I had forgotten that winter will come."
"But to do that which you propose," he continued, "to leave you to the
mercy of fierce and treacherous Indians, but half subdued, friends to
the whites only because they must--it is out of the question. To leave
you at a frontier post among rude trappers and traders, or at some half
savage pioneer's, is equally impossible. What tale would you have to
tell Colonel Verney? 'The Ricahecrians carried me into the Blue
Mountains. There your servant Landless found me and brought me a long
distance towards my home. But at the last, to save his own neck,
forfeit to the State, he left me, still in the wilderness and in danger,
and went his way.' My honor, madam, is my own, and I choose not to so
stain it. Again: I must be the witness to your story. You have wandered
for many weeks in a wilderness, far beyond the ken of your friends. To
your world, madam, I am a rebel, traitor and convict, a wretch capable
of any baseness, of any crime. If I go back with you, throwing myself
into the power of Governor and Council, at least I shall be credited
with having so borne myself towards my master's daughter as to fear
nothing from their hands on that score. The idle and censorious cannot
choose but believe when you say, 'I am come scatheless through weeks of
daily and hourly companionship with this man. Rebel, and traitor, and
gaol-bird, though he be, he never injured me in word, thought, or deed.'
... For all these reasons, madam, we must be companions still."
She had covered her face while he was speaking, and she kept it hidden
when he had finished. The slowly lengthening shadows of the trees had
barred the little glade with black when he spoke again. It was only to
ask in his usual voice if she were rested and ready to continue their
journey.
She raised her head and looked at him with swimming eyes, then held out
two trembling hands. He took them, helped her to her feet, and before
releasing them, bent and touched them with his lips. Then side by side
and in silence they traveled on through the halcyon calm of the world
around them.
*CHAPTER XXXIV*
*AN ACCIDENT*
It was early morning, and the mist lay heavy upon the forest and on the
bosom of the James. Landless and Patricia raked together the dying
embers of their fire and heaped fresh wood upon them. The flames leaped
up, warming their chilled bodies and filling the hollow that had been
their camping place with a cheerful light, in which the moisture that
clothed tree bole and fallen log and withered fern glistened like
diamonds. Their breakfast of deer meat and broiled fish, nuts and a few
late clusters of grape, with coldest water from a spring hard by, was
eaten amidst laughter and pleasant talk. When they had lingered through
it and when Landless had carefully extinguished their fire and had seen
to the priming of his gun, they addressed themselves to their journey.
A bowshot away was the river, and Patricia willed that they walk along
its banks that they might see the white mist lift, and the silver flash
of fish rising from the water, and the swoop of the kingfisher. Landless
agreeing, they went down to the river, and standing upon a rocky spit of
ground which ran far out into the stream, they looked down the misty
expanse, then turned involuntarily and looked up. At that moment the
fog lifted.
"Ah!" cried Patricia, and shrunk back, cowering almost to the ground.
Landless seized her in his arms and ran with her across the shingle and
up the bank. Plunging into the woods he made for the little stream
which flowed past their camping place, and entering the water, walked
rapidly up it.
"Did they see us?" Patricia asked in a low, strained voice.
"I am afraid so."
"They turned their boats towards the land. They are in the forest by
now."
"Yes."
"And there is no doubt that they are the same. I saw the scarlet
handkerchief upon the head of the mulatto."
"Yes, they are the same."
"They were such a little way from us. Oh, they may be upon us at any
moment!"
"We are in great danger," he answered gravely, "but it is not so
imminent as that. They were nearly a mile above us, and they have to
land, to hide their boats and to find our trail, all of which will take
time. We may count on having an hour's start of them, and we will do
all in our power to increase it by breaking our trail as we are doing
now. Then we cannot be many leagues from the falls, and the post below
them, or we may stumble at any moment upon some Monacan village which
will not need our urging to fly out against the Ricahecrians. Please
God, we will win through them yet."
Somewhat comforted, she lay within his arms without speaking until they
left the stream, when he set her down, and giving her his hand, ran with
her over the fallen leaves down the long aisles of the forest.
Red gold showers fell upon them; fiery vines clutched at their feet, or,
swinging from the trees, struck at their faces with vicious tendrils;
the pines made the ground beneath like ice; rotting logs covered with
gorgeous fungi barred their way; dark and poisonous swamps appeared
before them, and had to be skirted--the forest leagued itself with its
children and did them yeoman service.
The two aliens hastened breathlessly on. The sun climbed above the tree
tops and looked down upon them through the half denuded branches.
Midday came, and the short bright afternoon, and still they went fast
through the woods, and still they heard no other sound than the rustle
and sough of the leaves and the beating of their own hearts. They came
to rising ground, and mounting it, found themselves upon a chinquepin
ridge, and before them an abrupt descent of rain-washed, boulder-strewn
earth. It was so nearly a precipice that Patricia shrunk back with an
exclamation of dismay.
"I will go first," said Landless. "Give me your hands. So!"
Half way down, the earth began to slip. Patricia, looking up and over
her shoulder, uttered a cry. A great boulder, imbedded in the earth
directly above them, was dislodging itself, was falling! At her cry
Landless raised his eyes, saw the threatening mass, caught her around
the waist, and with one supreme effort swung her out of the path of the
avalanche which descended the next moment, bearing him with it to the
ground beneath.
He was recalled to consciousness by the dash of water against his face,
and opened his eyes to behold Patricia bending over him, very white,
with tragic eyes, and lips pressed closely together. She had run to the
river, flowing through the sunshine a hundred yards away, for water,
which she had brought back in his cap, and she had taken the kerchief
from her neck, wet it, and laid it upon his forehead. Her hands were
torn and bleeding, he saw them and uttered an exclamation. "It is
nothing," she said; "I had to move the rock." Scarcely fully conscious
as yet, his eyes glanced from her to the great rock which lay upon one
side, and upon which there were bloodstains. "I have had a bad fall,"
he said unsteadily, but with an attempt to speak lightly because of the
trouble in her eyes, "but it is over. Come! we must hurry on. We have
no time to lose."
As he spoke he strove to rise, but with the effort came a pang of
anguish, and he sank back, faint and sick, upon the ground.
"Ah! you cannot!" cried Patricia with a great sob in her voice. "It is
your foot. The rock fell upon it."
After a moment of lying with closed eyes, he sat up and with his knife
began to cut away the moccasin from the wounded limb. Presently he
looked up. "Yes, it is badly crushed. There is no doing anything with
it."
For many moments they gazed at each other in a despairing silence,
broken by Patricia's low, "What are we to do now?"
"We must go on," answered Landless. "It is death to stay here."
Holding by the bank against which he had leaned, he dragged himself up
and stood for an instant with eyes dark with pain; then, setting his
lips, took a step forward. The bronze of his face paled, and beads of
anguish stood upon his brow, but he took another step. Patricia, the
tears running down her cheeks, came to him and put his arm around her
shoulder. "I will be your crutch," she said, striving to smile. "I will
carry the gun, too."
Before them was a steeply sloping, grass-grown ascent rising to a broken
line of cliffs, scarred and gray, crowned with cedars and hung here and
there with crimson creepers, and with a chance medley of huge gray
boulders scattered about their base. Up this ascent they labored, so
slowly that the crags seemed like the mountain in the Arabian tale, ever
receding as they advanced. Twice Landless staggered and fell to his
knee, but when, after what seemed an eternity of pain and distress, they
reached the summit and Patricia would have had him rest, he shook his
head and motioned with his hand towards the narrow, boulder-strewn
plateau at the foot of the crags.
With her accustomed unquestioning obedience she turned towards the
rocks, and after another interval of painful toil they found themselves
in a sort of rocky chamber, a natural blockhouse, of which the sheer
cliff formed one wall and boulders of varying height and shape the
others.
Above them gleamed the blue sky; through the gaps between the rocks they
looked down upon the shining river and the parti-colored woods, and
behind them towered the cliffs. A strong wind was blowing and it sent
red leaves from the vines that draped the rock whirling down upon them.
"The tall gray crags," said Patricia in a strange voice, "and the
Martinmas wind. The river flowing in the sunshine too."
Landless sank upon the rocky floor. "I can go no further," he said.
"God help me!"
"I do not think another man could have come so far," she answered.
"What are we to do now?"
"You must go on without me."